A New Year – A New Time
Published 10:00 pm Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Every New Year emerges from the previous year. Every new breath comes after we exhale the breath we last took. Every new vision comes as we remove our eyes from something else we’ve been looking at. New beginnings come from endings. Every year, at midnight, Dec. 31, we leave one year and anticipate another, sometimes with sorrow and regret, sometimes with celebration, and sometimes with dread.
A New Year may sound good, but it’s also scary. No one ever knows what tomorrow will bring. Resolutions and dreams are different than bank statements or pathology reports. Images from our imagination are very different from photographs. Yet it is our dreams and imagination that actually energize our future, always. Faith is how we act on our dreams and live our hopes. If, “hope is to hear the melody of the future, faith is to dance to it” (Rubem Alves).
So, what’s going on in your imagination at the beginning of 2017? How might 2017 be different from 2016? What are you going to do? Or not do?
Howard Thurman, a prominent African American author, preacher, educator, and civil rights leader once wrote: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
So, what parts of your life give you energy? Or inspiration? Or a sense of meaning and purpose? I believe that those are the places where God’s Holy Spirit is working to call us to new life. In many ways our lives are like complicated, long term construction projects. We build them day by day, and year by year. Life’s opportunities only come to us one day at a time.
Of course, what we do in our lives is not completely up to us to decide. Some things that happen are totally beyond our control. Some are good, some are bad. Many are unexpected. But sometimes even those experiences can lead us to new life, and even glimpses of the “abundant life” that Jesus promised (John 10:10).
So, whatever is happening in your life right now, perhaps the most important message of the New Year is that we can trust that we are a part of a future greater than we can ever imagine.
As Jeremiah wrote: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). The path may be rocky or smooth, but the future is always open to new possibility. That is the message of Jesus’ birth, and life, and death, and resurrection.
So, have courage, and step out. Trust the God who has made all the days of our lives, and all the days we can ever imagine. After all, it is a New Year.
Dent Davis, Paster, Tryon Presbyterian Church